Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure

Chronic heart failure (HF) is an epidemic affecting approximately 1.5-2% of Canada’s population (12% in patients over 80yrs) and the current one-year mortality rate after HF diagnosis remains disturbingly high at 25-40%. Even with treatment, many HF patients require hospitalizations during the course of their disease; in Canada HF is responsible for $3 billion in hospital costs annually.

Gene expression in blood is highly affected by the type and proportion blood cells. Therefore, cell composition needs to be taken into account when looking for signatures specific to a condition. The issue is that cell composition needs to be assessed on fresh blood, i.e. at time of blood collection. If this has not been done, the only way one can assess is by predicting it using a methodology suggested in this proposal. Therefore, if blood cell count is not available, the cell composition can be inferred from existing next generation sequencing data sets.